CoherentWeb
A new kind of high-
performance XSLT and
XPath based test and
analysis tool; it picks
up where XML IDEs
finish
SketchPath-Pro
Enhance your capabiltiy to effectively develop, manage and test XPath expressions. Try this new tool now!
Only 35.00 EUR
Qutoric Links
External Links
Qutoric Limited
An XML Tools Company
The CoherentWeb Story
Dynamic Web Templates
This site is produced using Expression Web 2.0 (EW2). Dynamic Web Templates feature strongly in EW2 (and now EW3), as these allow parts of web pages that are repeated across the site, (such as the navigation bar) to be designed and maintained separately. A change to a Dynamic Web Template automatically updates other pages linked to the template.
A Limitation
This feature is extremely powerful, yet limited in one aspect: Dynamic Web Templates contents as applied to each page, can not adapt to properties of each page, though links are of course preserved.
Opportunity
The opportunity to improve on this was recognised, and because EW2, by default, maintains web pages as XHTML, a solution using XSLT stylesheets to provide these conditional styling rules seemed obvious.
Realising XSLT Benefits
Many powerful, generic XSLT tools exist and some are even capable of processing multiple-files fairly efficiently. What was needed however was a light-weight client-side tool focused on two tasks:
- Transforming a website
- Verifying the new website and its metadata
The Product
Developing a new tool for a single task like this is not easy, however, a multi-threaded XSLT test-harness was already available as a foundation. It was necessary to enhance and simplify the user-interface, remove non-essential (web-services and SMTP) functionality that would add complexity and then package the product,
A Tale of Two Tools
Work was already underway to enhance the SketchPath tool. This project had however encountered problems when using the traditional IDE approach to show multiple documents on lots of tabs. It didn't take a great leap to come to the conclusion that a marriage of SketchPath's XPath capabilities with the new tool's file handling and XSLT processing features would provide a powerful solution; not only for this website problem, but countless others.
In Use Today
CoherentWeb is used whenever this website is published, the XSLT updates specific page details such as navigation-bar highlights, and also copies/restyles links that must be repeated elsewhere, like on the footer.
Full Circle
With the successful launch of CoherentWeb, things have now come round full circle, the step-change in enhancements to the SketchPath features incorporated into CoherentWeb are such that a new product, SketchPath-Pro, has now been launched, this includes the powerful file browsing features of CoherentWeb, but without the XSLT bulk processing.
Starting off life as a high-performance test-harness, CoherentWeb had a basic, but functional user-interface:
Specialising the product to manage XHTML allowed the removal of unwanted features, plus some additional touches like the built-in browser.
The aesthetics were tidied up and icons were all tailor-made for the tool, a later version below:
The current production version of CoherentWeb has come along way, both in terms of features and user interface (apart from the fact that its main color is blue rather than grey!).
This product does however still betray its roots - SketchPath, a powerful XPath tool blended with a high-performance XSLT test engine:
